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Question for those with lathe/mill combo

10-31-2012, 06:43 PM

I was a machinist for many years so can usually figure out how to get something done but I'm always looking to get bang for the buck in expanding the capabilities of what I have. In my retired, hobby capacity, I have a 8x18 lathe/mill combo. A vendor has a sale on a milling attachment normally used to give the lathe an axis of movement. I'm wondering if the milling attachment wouldn't come in handy to expand the capabilities of the lathe/mill combo especially since the combo is a limited mill anyway. Does anyone have any experience using one of these attachments on a lathe/mill combo? Thanks for any thoughts. Jim

Jim, I have no experience of a lathe/mill combo but I do have a lathe and I have a milling attachment which has a horizontal pivot so that the workpiece can be tilted. I believe this type of milling attachment would add another axis of movement to your lathe/mill combo.

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Jim, I have no experience of a lathe/mill combo but I do have a lathe and I have a milling attachment which has a horizontal pivot so that the workpiece can be tilted. I believe this type of milling attachment would add another axis of movement to your lathe/mill combo.

Bodger, when you say "horizontal pivot", do you mean it will lean back (top pivots back towards the tailstock)? Is this a homebuilt attachment? I'd be curious to see a picture of it. Sounds useful.

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I really like my 3-in-1 but .. as you note the mill is the weak spot. My main frustration is/was
getting the work to the right height to work on it. If that attachment turns the lathe into a mill
and lets you adjust the distance to the work with your X axes .. then I can only think that it
would be a good thing.

It bugged me so much that I bought a big ol knee mill .. so I don't use the mill on the 3_in_1
any more .. but I do use its lathe. I outfitted it with infinite variable speed .. and .. a DRO ..
here is a pic if your curious.

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I've seen guys do something like this before to extend the capacity of their little mill. However, you will run out of vertical real estate pretty fast. Typically, the combo machines only have 12" or so between the table and the quill. If you add another X-Y table in there, you're probably down to 8" or so. Then you add a drill chuck and a drill and ... pfft no more room for the work piece!

(To clarify, I assume you are talking about adding something like an x-y table on top of the existing table/carriage)

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There's no doubt overall rigidity will suffer just like it does while using a milling attachment on any lathes cross slide. I'm not sure just how useful it could be for work done with the mill itself. But there are the jobs that show up while working on the ends of longer work where those milling attachments can and do work better than a vertical mill. For the majority of us that don't have any type of horizontal boring equipment. Using the lathe headstock to drive the tooling, and one of those milling attachments, they can still have a use for some jobs even if you already have a vertical mill.

I see you're in Christchurch. I emigrated to NZ in the 1970s and in Christchurch worked R&D for Atlas something (making electric stoves), PD something (large injection mold shop), and a big job shop in Christchurch (can't remember the name). A wage freeze was on at the time so you had to change jobs to get a raise.